September 10, 2011
Parashat Ki Teitzei, Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19
D'VAR TORAH 
Ki Teitzei: On Parenting and Punishment
Amy R. Perlin
Survey any class of Bar and Bat Mitzvah students at High Holy Day time and you will find that the number one sin they can all agree upon is mouthing off to their parents at least once in the past year. Survey the parents of these students and you will find more than a few quite sad that many of their sweet “tweens” are becoming rebellious and disrespectful, as the hormones seize their beings like an alien invasion. From time to time, I inform my students of the passage from Deuteronomy 21:18–21 and tell them that they should be thankful that this is not an operative Jewish practice today:
18] If a parent has a wayward and defiant [also translated as ‘stubborn and rebellious’] son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, 19] his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of the community. 20] They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21] Thereupon the residents of his town shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid.
What parent would not be troubled by this Torah passage? I have a bumper sticker on the bulletin board behind my desk that says, “It is never okay to hit a child.” As a lifelong advocate of protecting children from abuse, I want the Torah to offer parents alternatives to violence in disciplining their children, and this portion lets me down. Even worse, it lets our children down. Or does it?
All serious Jewish students of Torah ask the same question when we come upon a difficult passage in our sacred text that runs contrary to our judgment or values, “What do the Rabbis have to say about this passage?” We ask the question, because we know that if we are troubled, we have a cadre of ancestors who have struggled with this long before we have. We find comfort in the way they view problematic passages that run counter to what we understand as the Torah’s sense of justice and passion for life.
Our first stop for Rabbinic wisdom is the extensive discussion of this passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 68b–72a. Here we find a set of procedural protections that practically go so far as to swallow the rule that allows for such a terrible punishment. Rabbi Yose bar Rabbi Y’hudah, for instance states, “He is not considered a stubborn and rebellious son until he steals from both his father and his mother (Sanhedrin 71a, v.5). Other passages add that the son must be both a glutton and such a thief as to have stolen from both of his parents. In addition, his case must be tried by twenty-three judges (including three who previously found him guilty and sentenced him to a flogging) in order to condemn him to death. On top of that, there are extreme limitations on the boy’s age and a host of requirements for his parents, including that they both must agree to his death sentence. The father must defer to the mother if she disagrees. We might hope that requiring the mother to agree to kill her child stopped the procedure right there in its tracks. The host of requirements and prerequisites creates a legal unlikelihood, if not impossibility, of the stoning ever taking place. Instead, the wisdom of Torah is that the procedure brings a court into a family dispute, lest discipline at home get out of hand—a view not unfamiliar to us today. In essence, the court protects the child on behalf of society, which may be the inherent wisdom of our Torah text.
Sanhedrin 71a teaches, “There never was, nor will there ever be, a child who meets all of the legal qualifications of the ‘wayward and rebellious son.’ Why then was this law written? That you may study it and receive reward.” The Talmud uses this passage from Deuteronomy to teach parents that there are limitations on their autonomy and better ways to settle problems than stoning one’s child. So perhaps the case of the “wayward and defiant son” is discussed to highlight the danger to child and parents that comes when a family fails to set limits and create boundaries. It may also be there to remind us that there are adolescents who defy the law and society, and those children require the involvement of others beyond well meaning parents. Sometimes it takes a village to help a family deal with difficult children and situations.
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